In a previous blog article, I mentioned that Ben Davidson has a disclaimer (published in all capital letters) on the “About” section of his website that says, “I OFTEN INTERJECT MY OPINIONS ABOUT THE TOPICS PRESENTED ON THE CHANNEL AND ON THIS SITE, AND I ATTEMPT TO CLEARLY COMMUNICATE WHEN THAT IS THE CASE” (Davidson 2018). I went on to point out that this is:

I find it’s helpful to read the things that people say in order to read between the lines and discern the real meaning behind the words they’re using, because some people sure do say a whole lot! It’s important to note that not everything that someone says is true, even when they say that it is; this is especially true when the person making the claims has no relevant education or expertise to back up the assertions/interpretations they’re making.

The new “Favorite Writing Scenes” blog series is going to examine some of my favorite scenes from film and television that are about either: writers or the writing process. Each installment in this blog series will analyze a single scene (clip) by isolating a theme that illustrates an actual advantage to be internalized from the writing process being portrayed.

Today’s blog article will focus on the importance of “organization” to the writing process and how a productive writer tends to be an organized writer. However, the “Catch 22” of this is something that Dr. Daniel Levitin has pointed out, “The obvious rule of efficiency is you don’t want to spend more time organizing than it’s worth…If you’re finding things quickly enough as it is, then don’t go to all the trouble” (Feldman 2014).

Writers love to procrastinate, so we need to be careful not to turn cleaning and organizing into just another excuse not to write. It’s important to set work times with specific goals and to keep a clean work space in order to maintain focus on the task at hand: writing.

My previous blog article pointed out the illegitimacy of Ben Davidson’s (Suspicious0bservers) claims of having a “peer-reviewed publication” to his name. This was done by emphasizing the criticisms made by the solar physicist behind the YouTube channel, Space Weather, about how “what Ben has done is he’s given his paper to a poor journal with no quality peers and as a result ended up with poor results and bad research” (Space Weather 2017).

This blog post is going to expand that focus to a couple of Ben Davidson’s other claims. But first, it’s important to sledge-hammer this nail on the head: there is a big difference between publishing a paper in a reputable peer-reviewed journal and publishing one in a predatory journal that is meant to mimic the peer-review process; the latter of which is pseudoscience that anyone can do, while the former is what constitutes evidence for the scientific claims made by experts.

Hello everybody, I apologize for the long absence, however, a lot has happened over the past several months!

Anyway, today’s blog post is a slow-burn introduction to two YouTube channels that are polar opposites of one another: one promotes science and the other monetizes pseudoscience.

The first channel is called, Space Weather, and it’s owned and operated by a man who has degrees in physics as well as 30+ years of experience working as a space weather forecaster. He created his YouTube channel with the purpose of correcting misinformation and making a public record to show that some of the pseudoscience circulating on social media is being challenged with real science.

Pseudoscientists are a dime-a-dozen, which is ironic because most of them are fixated on trying to take your last dime.

In November of 1908, the scientific journal Nature defined a “crank” as “a man who cannot be turned.” This is fitting as both pseudoscientists and cranks are unwavering in their fringe beliefs even when met with insurmountable evidence that they are wrong.

Reading legitimate articles about science can reveal just how little pseudoscience peddlers, and their audiences, know about actual science and its terminology. Nonetheless, this does not stop them from pontificating on concepts that they have little knowledge of or from misleading anyone who’s gullible enough to mistake them for a competent authority figure.

It’s important to note that there’s a big difference between being an “authority on science” and “speaking authoritatively on science,” the latter of which anyone can do to varying degrees of believability, however, only qualified, educated and experienced experts are capable of being authorities on science. This is the inherent difference between a scientist and a pseudoscientist: one has scientific know-how and the other just knows how to blow hot air.